Lawrence Zaxton

Lawrence Zaxton was/is an American scientist. In 1963 he was chosen by colleague Don Blake to present Blake's invention of a powerful green android, with the assistance of the hero Thor (secretly Blake himself). Jealous of Blake's creation, Zaxton deliberately sabotaged the machine, forcing Thor to throw it high into the sky to explode harmlessly. Around this time Zaxton was working on a "duplicating machine," which could create a copy of any object it pointed toward, except for living creatures. Zaxton kidnapped Jane Foster, Blake's nurse, and blackmailed Blake into helping him finish the duplicator. Once the device was completed, Blake attempted to surreptitiously transform into Thor, but Zaxton caught him in the act, becoming the only other living human to know Blake's secret identity. Zaxton created a duplicate Thor, and explained that living duplicates possessed opposite personality traits of the original: in effect, he'd created an evil Thor. The two Thors fought across the city, with Zaxton aiding the duplicate, creating another Thor and an additional Mjölnir to give his copies an advantage. It proved all for naught however, as Mjölnir only grants its power to those worthy, a qualification that the evil duplicate Thors did not meet. Thor defeated the copies, causing them to fade into nothingness. Fearing reprisal, Zaxton nervously made a copy of himself so Thor wouldn't know which one to punish, but dropped his machine off of the overpass on which he was standing. Reaching for the duplicator, Zaxton fell off the bridge to his death. This left the duplicate, benevolent Zaxton to live out his life as a good-natured scientist.